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Monday, 18 February 2013

Yable : The Inevitable Bond by Mansi Soni

I attended yet another book launch event today (Sunday, 17-Feb-2013). I’d gone to Crossword at the City Center Mall in Banjara Hills with my family. There was the first reading of The Inevitable Bond, the first book by Mansi Soni.

Most of the attendees were the authoress’s friends, including the anchor. They started the event with a quiz on cricket and literature, giving away 5-star chocolate bars to those who got the answers right.

Thereafter, Mansi read a few portions from the book, which were selected to give a brief understanding of the plot. It’s about cricket and a wanderer’s world powered by THE five elements, a world in which all of us have copies and the protagonist has to save her favorite cricketer. Perhaps Sekhar Kammula or Rajamouli should take a look.

During the Q&A session after the reading, I asked one question - how she found her publisher. She answered that she googled for the top ten publishers in India. Some of them don’t accept soft copies and she had to send the printed manuscript. But the short answer is by simply googling for publishers and approaching them as per their policies.

To another question, Mansi replied that she always wanted to write and she had a vague idea about the book. But as she wrote the book, she became very engrossed in it and the book took its final shape, one which she hadn’t envisaged when she began writing.

Back home, I read the first two pages and looks like she should have had a better editor. Look at the following lines:

he came on his front foot and smashed the ball in his favorite area in the field, for a six.

My friends were discussing the match and in particularly having thoroughly enjoyed the whole sledging episode, but my head was still humming with the memory of him spiking his hair.

She was always perfect, be it in her makeup, in her dresses, and in everything she bought or owned.

I wasn’t like either of them. I was, perhaps, the less extreme in personality when compared to the two.

But anyways, the author came off as a simple person, not yet distorted into flashy gimmicks and melodramatic emoting that I have seen in other writers. It looked like the book was a sincere attempt. Hence I will read it. That’s yaatmtrl -- yet another addition to my to-read list.